Printing at the EUI with linux is easier than you think. Maybe it is even easier than with Windows... If you do not believe it, follow these instructions.
NOTE: as far as I know, Ubuntu 8.10 comes with a kind of new print manager, which enables you to add, remove, etc. printers. BUT: since I do NOT use Ubuntu 8.10 (and neither GNOME) the solution provided here is a more general one, which works in every distribution and in every version (or at least, it should so...).
Most probably CUPS (printing server for linux) is already installed on your system. To check it, open your web browser and give in the following address:
http://localhost:631
If you get something like that (in my case in Spanish...), then CUPS is installed on your system and you can continue in the point about the installation of the SAMBA client.
Otherwise you have to install CUPS. In Ubuntu it is very easy. Open synaptic and choose the following packages:
cupsys cupsys-bsd cupsys-client cupsys-common cups-pdf cupsys-driver-gutenprint
If you use GNOME, then install please also the following package:
gnome-cups-manager
smbclient
The next step is to Add a printer. Open your browser and go to http://localhost:631.
You have to write three informations (name, location and description) but only the first one is important: the name of the printer. I recommend to give always clear and short names. For instance, lib1 for the library or schi for the printer in Schifanoia. Important is also that the name should not have any spaces.
The next step is to choose the type of connection we are using. Here Samba does its job. Select the option "Windows printer via SAMBA" and continue...
Now we have to give the URI, which means Uniform Resource Identifier and is a compact string of characters used to identify or name a resource. The structure of this URI will be like this (this is one of the printers in the library).
smb://iuedom\YOURUSERNAME:YOURPASSWORD@IUEDOM/CEPHEUS/mfc-bib0-1_q
please change YOURUSERNAME:YOURPASSWORD with the right values. Please be aware that username and password have to be separated by ":"
The structure of this URI is relatively easy and can help us to adapt it for other printers at the EUI. The first part is:
smb://iuedom\YOURUSERNAME:YOURPASSWORD@IUEDOM/
There you find the protocol (smb=samba), the domain (iuedom) and your username and password.
The last part indicates the printer we want to use:
CEPHEUS/mfc-bib0-1_qCEPHEUS is the server to which the printer is attached. And mfc-bib0-1_q is the name of the printer.
Then if you want to add other printers, please adapt the line like this:
smb://iuedom\YOURUSERNAME:YOURPASSWORD@IUEDOM/
is always the same.
And then add the following part which is the printer (adapted from this site; but not all printers are in this list!):
| Badia Terminal Room: 1st printer | CEPHEUS/mfc-trm-1_q |
| Badia Terminal Room: 2nd printer | CEPHEUS/mfc-trm-2_q |
| Badia Library: Ground floor | CEPHEUS/mfc-bib0-1_q |
| Badia Library: Ground floor | CEPHEUS/mfc-bib0-2_q |
| Badia Library: Ground floor | CEPHEUS/mfc-bib1-2_q |
| Villa Schifanoia: Terminal Room | CEPHEUS/mfc-trm-vsf_q |
| Casale: Lab | CEPHEUS/mfc-lab-casale_q |
| San Domenico: Scuola | DRACO/mfc-ssd_q |
After this the mark of the printer must be selected. BUT: we have to deal with a call "raw printer", therefore we select Raw in the list.
The next step is easy. We select the model of the printer... there should be only one option (Raw queue (en)). Please select it and continue...
And now we are at the end... CUPS asks us for a username and a password. The user must be root and the password should be of course your root password (not your user password!). NOTE: apparently, in the new versions of ubuntu (8.04, 8.10) you can put your username + your password and it should work.
The printer should now be installed on your computer and ready for use. If you want, you can add other printers. You can configure as many printers as you want. Follow the instructions on this site again and add the appropiate URI for other printers.
For some reason when you print with this method, there is no initial page with your username printed. I do not know why, but it is not bad for the forests in the world...
To be honest I am not completely happy with this solution, because we are installing the whole CUPS server which (I think) should not be necessary. Just the CUPS client should be sufficient, but I did not find the solution yet...
For more information about CUPS, you can open following site.
